Know thyself

I travelled to Delphi once and visited the Oracle’s temple. There’s an inscription near the entry – worn by the elements but still visible. Roughly translated it’s an injunction to ‘know thyself.’ How’s that for prescience? She saw Daniel Goleman coming two and a half thousand years ago! More seriously, however, 2017 has been a year in which I’ve learning something important about myself.

I started the year as an employee of a large, successful professional services firm, and I ended the year self-employed again. Having retired as an equity partner in a large, successful professional services firm in 2012, my decision to join another such firm is curious.

With the wisdom of hindsight I now believe that I was trying to recreate what I had in my best years as an equity partner: autonomy, intellectual stimulation and financial reward. Not a bad trifecta, but not what I found in the new job. To be fair, it was not the organisation that was the problem. They did nothing to misrepresent the job. It was my rose-coloured lenses. I was imagining the future as a recreation of the past.

I spend my life assisting clients to see their organisations as they really are and determine on that basis what needs to change. So here’s an example of me failing to practice what I preach. Instead of testing my job offer rigorously, I jumped into an environment that mismatched my expectations.

What I learned about myself is that I can dwell too long on the past. Instead I should try and emulate the Oracle and look into the future more often. With practice I may get better at predicting the outcome of my present actions instead of simply hoping for the best.